Los Angeles-based Canadian artist JESSE COLIN JACKSON has been photographing tower apartment neighbourhoods since 2006. “Radiant City”, his most ambitious project on the subject to date, focuses on TORONTO’s aging tower blocks and their significance to the city.
As TORONTO goes ahead with plans to revitalize many of these buildings, Jackson’s work reveals the size and complexities they embody. Oftentimes they’re home to incoming immigrant populations, essential housing for a quarter of the city’s population, the location of much of TORONTO’s urban poverty, products of planning ideologies gone awry, locations of past glory, current dynamism and future potential.
JESSE COLIN JACKSON is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Irvine; and has previously taught at the University of Toronto and OCAD University.
<PHOTOS ABOVE – 1) The Buckingham, 714 + 716 The West Mall; 2) 3151 Bridletown Circle; 3) 190 Exbury Road & 2269 Jane Street; 4) Leaside Towers, 85 + 96 Thorncliffe Park Drive; 5) Riverside Apartments, 2737 + 2757 Kipling Avenue>
